This post is brought to you by LG Electronics, maker of UltraWide monitors.
Today’s visual content gets consumed on screens of all sizes, from smartphones to building-size projections and everything in between. That gives everybody’s eyeballs plenty of great stuff to look at no matter where we look. But for creative professionals, the size of the screen can prove key to the process — and to the quality of the content they produce.
That’s not just talk. According to a study by the University of Utah, using a larger monitor led to a 52 percent jump in productivity and saved workers an average of 2.5 hours per day. The right monitor for the task at hand can add significant efficiency to any workflow. “When it comes to desktop real estate, more space means greater productivity until the point is reached where screen size and task requirements intersect,” says the report. “Large widescreen monitors can be equally or more effective than dual screen monitors. Both will be more effective than smaller, single screen monitors.”
Just ask any photographer, videographer, designer, architect or any other type of digital creative, and they’ll tell you that a clear, vivid, fast monitor makes both creating and consuming content far more enjoyable. After all, they call it the desktop because you’re supposed to do work from it, and who wants to do that work through a small window?
Beyond the obvious experiential and workflow benefits, using a large, high-definition screen can solve key problems that stymie the creative process.
Photo: Parsons Making Center Graphic Lab
Want to put an end to color shifting and distortion? And eliminate confusion over why a printed result doesn’t match what’s on the screen? Color accuracy gets dialed in at the factory on an LG UltraWide screen using IPS technology with an sRGB over 99 percent.
The immersive effect of a curved screen like the UltraWide also proves more ergonomic than a standard flat monitor, so countless hours spent at the computer feel much less stressful.
Many of us don’t need a study to tell us that a good, sizeable screen makes for better working conditions. This is the age of the digital drawing board, and no artist’s canvas should come up short or add lag. But sometimes it helps to be shown through numbers what we already know from experience.
LG UltraWide monitors at Parsons School of Design
LG is partnering with various design institutions to see whether use of its premium UltraWide displays leads to a productivity bump. The first institution to participate in the UltraWide Academy Sponsorship Program is The New School’s esteemed Parsons School of Design. The partnership led to the opening of a new media lab decked out with LG’s 34-inch, 21:9 UltraWide monitors.
Photo: LG
Parsons students certainly welcomed the new creative tools. Their experience backs up the results of the University of Utah study, too. A survey of Parsons students revealed that more than 70 percent of them thought the new displays made multitasking easier and improved productivity.
That figure also seems to validate the point being made by LG: Whether due to physical comfort, easier viewing or immersion (thanks to that curved screen), using a better monitor leads to producing better work.
UltraWide Academy Sponsorship Program
LG aims to expand its UltraWide Academy Sponsorship Program to a wider range specialized schools. The company is interested in seeing and measuring how photography, film, design and other creative categories can benefit from bigger, more immersive monitors.
These institutions are producing the next generation of creatives, who grow up in and among screens, and are therefore the first people we should be looking to in anticipating the next generation of creative tools. It should be interesting to see what they have to say about LG’s UltraWide monitors, and what impact they have on the creative process. But it seems irrefutable that for digital creatives, a better monitor means better work.
